Social Media Tips
The Key to Success on Social Media
That costs you $0.00
How to Succeed on Social Media
Put aside an hour a day to engage with other people's posts. Engage by making a comment or asking a question to start a conversation. The more often you write comments the faster you get noticed by those in your target market.
Hitting "like" is not enough, though it will help to build your newsfeed. When you hit like, that person's future posts will show up in your feed to comment on.
Here are some ideas to help you find the right content to comment on.
On Twitter:
Use Twitter's list feature to create feeds of interesting people. Check the list consistently to engage with your ideal audience criteria. The more you engage the more people will follow you.
All Social Media Platforms:
Create a spreadsheet with links to profiles of people you want in your newsfeed. Go through the list once a week to find content to engage with and start adding these people into your newsfeed.
Make a list of hashtags you find interesting and search them daily for engaging content.
Use the search bar to find posts using your keywords to find people who are talking about what you do. You will discover what your competitors are posting about and potential clients.
To improve your newsfeed, engage with people you want and block the spammy posters you don't want to see. If you do this regularly, your newsfeed will become more valuable.
To save you time, use a social automation tool like, zoho social, to schedule your posts and ensure your content calendar is full. - I've used Hubspot, Loomly, Buzzsumo, and currently use zoho social because it is part of Zoho One's 40 apps that work together to manage everything a small business needs measured for one small rate.
Do You Struggle to Create Content for Social Media?
Spend less time Creating Content.
Content Packages makes posting content easy.
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Get generic images / graphics on specific topics
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Text to copy and paste
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Writing prompts to help you tell your brand story
Where to get content packages:
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APeeling members receive monthly motivational content packages
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Content Packages A La Carte, available in the BookAPeel Store
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Examples of Social Media Content in Packages
How to Write a Social Media Profile Bio
Complete your social media profiles with consistent messaging and images.
Writing your Social Media Bio:
Keep it simple and to the point.
Tell people whom you help, what problem you solve, and how you solve it.
Social Media Profile Challenge:
Write a one sentence bio with the whom, what, and how.
Take the Social Media Challenge for a step by step social media profile set up.
10 To Dos for Social Media Success
1. Lead with objectives
2. Build your expert authority
3. Start a conversation
4. Show appreciation
5. Stand out
6. Have a clear goal
7. Dominate on one platform
8. Create a calendar
9. Be visual
10. Delegate what you can
Social Media Stories on MarketAPeel
Social Media Profile Avatars and Banners
Social Media Profile Avatar:
Your profile avatar will be dependent on the goal of your profile. If your profile is a corporate brand, then a logo is the best option for the avatar. To connect with people use a headshot, casual for personal and professional for LinkedIN.
When using an image of yourself, smile and be approachable.
Your avatar will signal to people the tone of your profile. Professional, casual, friendly, business, investor, or trolling.
Social Media Profile Banner:
The dimensions of a banner are different for every site.
Choose an image that represents something about yourself and change it up regularly. If it's a personal profile feel free to create a banner using a family photo. If its professional use an image from your industry. If it is for business show your services or products in the banner images.
Create a graphic with a quote, tag line, or one word that you want to be known for. You can use a program like Canva if you don't have access to Adobe Creative Suite.
Click here to share your social media banner with the MarketAPeel community.
Do YOU want MORE TIPS & IDEAS
Social Media Posts Tips
Showing up consistently is important to keep your organic reach as wide as possible. When you don't post regularly, your organic reach will be impacted. As a busy business owner, creating content can be a waste of time. MarketAPeel can help you save time and post consistently: choose from purchasing social media content packages including visual content and the copy to go with them. Or choose our full managed service option where we work with you to create content for your story and mange posting, monitoring, and engaging.
If you are low on posting ideas, check out what others are posting and which posts you engage with.
Social Media Posting Tips:
Have an objective for your post: Marketing, sales, website traffic, brand story, engagement
Mix up the objectives - do not sell in all your posts
When you create a post, use the first sentence to let people know what the post is about
Write using as few words as possible - Delete every unnecessary word
Ask a question to encourage comments
Use a call to action for sales posts
Use applicable hashtags
Mix up your posts with images of you, graphics, and videos
Be you and tell your story
Got questions, a comment, or an idea about social media platforms? Be part of the discussion.
How to Get Noticed on Social Media
Give people reasons to follow your story
You need to show them your story and give them something interesting to engage with, which in the noise of social media can be time consuming and difficult. Here are some ideas: share special offers, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and entertaining facts. Post regularly and engage with other people’s content so they will come over and check out your content.
Tip: Don’t bother commenting on posts with lots of comments and lots of likes. Just like your posts, your comments will get lost and chances are, the person has someone else monitoring the profile, so you aren’t really engaging with them.
Find posts by people who have a few comments on them and a few likes so you know they have an engaged audience, which they engage with, and they will respond to your message. You want engaged followers, not just followers.
Create multimedia content
Post photos, graphics, and video to engage your audience in different ways. Don’t be boring, change it up and continually test new ideas. However, make sure you are consistent in your posting, and you stay within your brand messaging guidelines. Don’t have brand messaging guidelines, well – You my friend need to become a MarketAPeel member and start creating your brand story with MarketAPeel – Level 1 membership is free to get you started.
Tip: People need some repetition to get a message through their skulls and deep into their minds. Repeat your message using the same layout and message with different images or different media styles. Cycle three messages through for a month and then switch it up and start telling a different part of the story with a new objective and goal.
How to Tell Brand Stories on Social Media.
I first started hearing about Facebook in 2005 and from there quickly started connecting on other emerging social media profiles of the time, some no longer in existence. Facebook changed the way we connect with each other and how we tell and consume stories. Experts in telling stories in sound bites and trailers evolved as we moved into the digital realm of storytelling on social media. The stories were no longer written by the professionals, they evolved with each comment, like, and share. This method of storytelling has rapidly fractured brand stories and confused the marketplace about what unknown, small business, service-based businesses were about. In the game of getting eyeballs and followers, the stories became not about the brand but about whatever the audience would engage with leading brands to evolve into celebrities and the new business model of influencer marketing.
Influencers are pros at looking good, entertaining people, inspiring them, and motivating them. They tell a story about themselves over multi posts with pleasing aesthetics and short prose. To get to the level of an influencer, one must spend hours on social media engaging with other influencers who are like them in the hopes of sharing their audience and finding new followers. Those who gamed the system soon found that the platforms turned against them and soon the numbers no longer mattered and those who understood how social media worked, focused on their niche, and engaged with their audiences on a different level.
Influencer marketing worked for big global brands whose customers would buy what their favourite influencers would showcase. It didn’t work so well for local businesses because the influencers audience was global. Many small businesses wasted money on influencer marketing thinking the audience lived where the influencer did. They did not know to ask how many of your followers live in the area. It didn’t take long for small businesses to realize that giving away a free product for a selfie with an influencer did not result in increased sales and they began to push back.
Influencers know how to brand themselves and how to tell their brand stories to garner a following and convert that following into dollars.
It isn’t cheap or easy to tell a brand story into the sphere of influencer. It takes a team of talented content creators working endlessly to tell the story of your brand’s life and actively go out into social media to find new followers and entice them to commit to being a part of the brand’s audience.
Those who understands the audiences on each platform will be successful at building a following, however, that doesn’t mean those followers will convert into customers that takes a deeper type of storytelling most influencers ignore in their race to the most follower’s championships.
If you want to succeed on social media by building a following and then converting them into customers, you need a full brand storytelling funnel strategy. And it starts by understanding each platform and the audiences you will find there.
Lower Attention Spans on Digital Platforms
We tend to skim. I doubt most people who land on this post will read these words because let’s face it, there is another post on social media, another website waiting on a Google Search. You are here to see what there is, consume it as fast as possible and then move on.
In 2018, and the average human has an 8 second attention span and millions of options of actual content. This makes it really hard for marketers and content creators to even get a single message across to viewers before they swipe on down
Everything is faster and shallower, so we need to get to the point and move on to something else because we may be missing out on something important. The fear of missing out drives us to increase the amount we put on our plates and drive through life at lightning speed. The best storytellers stop us in our tracks and hold our attention by entertaining us, informing us, and creating fear of missing something if they don’t focus. Create lots of content and occasionally, stop your audience in their tracks by giving them something of higher entertainment value, which took more resources and effort to create.
We are Drowning in Crappy Content
How often have you spent time swiping through your social media feed and can’t remember what you saw or where the time went? Social media has become the modern-day version of channel surfing. Why did you spend time switching from one channel to the other? The answer will be the same as to why you continue to waste time swiping through crappy content. You're bored and you want someone else to entertain you.
When you create something extra that will stop someone scrolling, you become the brand that is entertaining the viewer. They then get more involved with your story and will engage with a like, a comment, or if you are really lucky, by sharing it with their audiences.
Thing is, unless you have an unlimited budget to create amazing content, you will need to create a lot of mediocre content in between to consistently stay in front of your audience. Keep the cash for the important stories about your brand. It can cost $10K to make a cool professional 30 second video. Those pieces will sit on the internet for years and rack up viewers over time because they are unique, fun, and entertaining – So they must be evergreen in nature to stand the test of time.
Types of Content you can Create to Tell Your Brand Story
Text Only Content Social Media Post
The odd text only piece of content in a feed can stand out because it is different. To get someone to stop and pay attention you’ll need to have one hell of a first sentence, so spend your time getting that first sentence as concise and interesting as possible to create curiosity. Then tell the story.
Example of a text only story social media post:
I saw my son hook his hand instead of the bait before being dragged overboard and deep into the depths of the ocean when he called to say he got a job on a commercial fishing boat. The scary scene from the movie The Perfect Storm looped through my mind for days afterward. Then he called full of anxiety, he was changing his mind, giving me the chance to keep him safely on solid ground, but I didn’t.
I put my own irrational fears aside and asked him why he wanted to go in the first place. Over the course of twenty minutes, we talked about all the wonderful things he would see along BC coastline. We found solutions to every possible problem and when I hung up, he was leaving the safety of the shore for the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean.
The first sentence was created to elicit curiosity through the horror of a mother’s fears, something most mothers can relate to. From there the story unfolds keeping the reader engaged with some twists and turns until in the end we overcome our fears and anxiety so the young man can have an adventure.
Image content for social media post:
Sharing photos of our lives and giving our audiences a peak behind the curtain at the Wizard of our own Oz, we give our audiences a chance to relate to the human element of our brand. The candid image stops people from scrolling because it is different from the stock images and advertising content they see in their feeds. People want to engage with people, with authenticity, and be a part of something real.
For platforms like Instagram, keeping the colours similar and using filters to ensure a more aesthetic look to your profile is popular because it makes the larger story connect easily. However, if it is all models posing with products, it’s not the peak behind the curtain. Ask employees to wear your brand colours and shoot them interacting with your product in front of a neutral colour background you want to weave throughout all your photos. Write who name of the person and a short story about why they like the product.
Video content for social media post
You can do the same thing as above with video and have your employees tell people why they like working at your business or which product they recommend and why. By having them wear brand coloured clothes and all in front of the same background, your Instagram will naturally weave the whole story together.
You’ll want to weave these employee videos together with text graphics and product photos, all using the same background colour.
Videos can be hugely beneficial to everything from brand building to sales-force ignition. But only if you create them the right way. Here is Six Degrees Productions’ handy guide to making better videos.
DO #1: Know why you’re making the video
DO #2: Understand your Specific audience
DO #3: Tell a story
DON’T #1: Make long videos!
DON’T #2: Don’t DIY unless you know what you are doing
DON’T #3: Forget where your video will be played
Read six degrees productions full article about
how to create video content for social media on the APeeled Blog.
Gifs content for social media post
Gifs are images that move or short pieces of video that loop. Gifs are popular to express emotion in a conversation on a post. Use them to show your product or a person’s emotional response to your product or the story you share in the text.
For example, if I wanted to add a Gif to the story about my son going out onto the ocean, I could use a gif like this one. To show the emotion of the story and use motion to stop someone from scrolling past.
Infographic content for social media post
Infographics are just that – Graphics that visually tell you a story about information. They are perfect if you are a visual person who needs a visual to understand a concept or story. The biggest issue with Infographics though are the size of the font. If people can’t read it, why bother putting it there. You must be able to have the font readable, especially on a small mobile device screen.
One idea is to break the infographic up into pieces and share those pieces on social media with a link to view the full infographic. Social media sites don’t like linked posts, however if you boost the post or use it as an ad, you can drive traffic to your website. Ensure the piece you post creates curiosity and clearly shows the person that there is more to the infographic than what you see.
Make a video out of the pieces and visually show the story of the infographic in motion. There are lots of ways to use the graphic storytelling tool. It just takes a bit of extra effort and time or someone like me, a content creator, to help you out.
The Content of the Future is VR / AR.
Both virtual reality and augmented reality are here and being used by the big brands with deep pockets. If you want to be ready to go once these technologies become easily accessible to content creators and small businesses, keep an eye on what is going on. Seek it out and see what they are doing and think about how you would use it in your brand storytelling efforts.
Facebook has changed its name to Meta as it prepares to enter the Metaverse, which is not a new concept and has failed several times as people didn’t really feel connected in the virtual avatar environments. It will be interesting to see how Facebook, oh sorry, Meta, will utilize the space to bring its users together. There are lots of small businesses out there with Metaverse options for you to explore. If you know of some, please put a link to their site in the comments section.
No product
Create Unlimited Content for Brand Storytelling on Social Media
When you create a piece of content for a social media post, it's not a one and done thing. Repurpose your content to make your brand storytelling efforts easier and provide some brand recognition with repetition. Repetition is an important part of our learning process and our buying journey. So reuse and recycle your content. It's ok - in fact - I encourage it.
A Story of a Piece of Content's Journey
As a content creator, I spend all day every day creating content. By writing brand stories, creating copy, designing graphics, branding images, producing video, and recording podcasts. If I had to come up with a new idea for each platform or media, I'd run out of ideas after awhile and I'd need twice the amount of time in my day, or maybe ten times.
This week I created content about my journey into the deep information overload known as SEO. The journey is not over, but it has already opened a surprising door. It all started with getting frustrated with the amount of traffic my magazines were getting using social media as the main channel to obtain traffic. With Social Media platforms restricting any post with a link, it reduces the amount of organic reach I am able to obtain. The solution, improve the SEO of my website.
Since I was neck deep in SEO information, I decided to write about the journey for my weekly column at RAYL.News. The editor loved the piece and told everyone about it, which was a great ego boost, especially because one of the partners is a formerly worked in a leadership role at AOL and owned Global Digital Newspapers.
I was inspired to add another 3000 words to the article and post it on my APeeled blog, to improve the SEO for the keywords Brand Storytelling. Thing was, I also owed RAYL.Market an ebook, so I added another 10,000 words and some infographics to the document and created a 40 page ebook with a workbook component called, What You Need to Know about SEO for Small Businesses. Now I have a backlink from RAYL.News to my website. I have a 5000 word blog post about SEO for Brand Storytelling and a 15,000 word ebook to sell in RAYL.Market's estore and here in my estore, BookAPeel.
That is a lot of content for one topic. I can now break it up into sound bites to share on social media and in Facebook market to drive traffic to the blog and then to purchase the full ebook plus workbook.
Content I can create from the ebook:
I can use the graphics from the infographics I created for the book.
I can make a video of the book.
I can create a flipbook ebook to sell.
I can take 2000 word excerpts for APeeling and CurbAPeel digital magazines
I can make graphics with the cover to let people know about the book
I can create a 2000-3000 ebook version and create a landing page to build an email list using a free download
I can read it for my podcast UnPeeled
I gave a presentation by scrolling through the ebook for my daily BrandAPeel show Sponsered by RAYL.Chat
I will be able to make a tonne of content about what I learned and what small businesses need to know about SEO.
In the Article Creating Unlimited Content, Trina Weller had some ideas around repurposing content for social media:
#1. Look at competitors
#2. What comes “Second-Nature”
#3 Create content around what they don’t know
#4 Let the audience tell you
To read her full article on creating content click here
The article I wrote for RAYL.News got me an invitation to a zoom meeting with business owners for a presentation by a former VP of Go Daddy. It was an amazing meeting where the RAYL.News guys introduced me and gave me a chance to tell everyone what I do and get to know everyone in the room. Before we signed off, the former VP was on my website and talking about exploring the idea of sending some work my way. You never know where a piece of content will land you. My content has landed my clients in interesting places over the last few years. Opportunities that came to them due to the postsI created about their brand stories. Seeing the results of my hard work fills me with pride and gives me confidence to step up and tell more of my own brand story.
What You Need to Know about SEO
Small business owners don't need to know everything about SEO, but they do need to know enough to ensure when people are searching for their keywords, they will be in the running for traffic to click through to their site. Inside this ebook you will discover what you need to know about SEO. Includes worksheets to help create content to rank for keywords.
Available at the BookAPeel book store.
Quotes make good filler for content calendars to fill the gaps between telling your brand story and the story of your customers. Look for quotes that are statements for what you do and how you help people. As a storyteller and content creator, quotes about why brand storytelling is important fits perfectly with my brand story message.
If you are a professional and your story is around your personal brand, find quotes that reflect your values, the problem you solve, and lessons you learned. For example, a Realtor® can create quote content focusing on the words, home, design, and family. They can then use their brand colours and images of people hanging out at home to create graphics for their posts.
Start with your Brand Story Keywords to Find Quotes.
Make a list of words to search on Google. There are plenty of sites filled with quotes you can use to create content. Choose the ones that resonate with you and are enhance your personal brand story.
Quotes Generate Emotional Responses to your Brand Story
The quotes that come from well-known names will add to the credibility of your story and resonate with your audience because they recognize the name, which builds feelings of trust for your brand story.
When you use quotes to enhance your brand’s story, members of your audience will identify with certain quotes, which creates feelings of connection for your brand story.
Brand Story Images for Quotes
An image tells a story. Find images that portray your brand story or it’s keywords. Look for simple images with minimal detail or noise. The best images will have negative space for you to place words on without getting in the way of the image’s story. You can use the same image for different quotes at different times in the year.
You can also use your brand colours as the background with the words in either black or white, whichever stands out against your brand colours. This type of quote is particularly good on Instagram for anchoring the eye and standing out in a feed.
Tell the Bigger Brand Story the Quote Reflects
When you write the copy for your post, tell a story about why the quote speaks to your brand or a brand story exemplifying what the quote says.
For example:
Quote “People are looking for a connection.” —John Michael Morgan
The brand story copy:
Ever feel like you connected with a person you just met because the conversation was so interesting? Think about those moments and what the two of you talked about, I bet stories were told.
I could then go on to tell a story about how I felt connected to a person I met because they told me a story that resonated with me.
Click to read the full article and find quotes about brand storytelling
Social Media is a reflection of the shallows of society. It is filled with incomplete stories, misunderstandings, and insecurities. It is the pavement of good intentions and placating advice. It is messy. It is kind. It is cruel. It is supportive. It is ugly. It is beautiful. Social Media is a reflection of life as we want it to be, not life itself.
Life is more complex. People are deeper than the Mariana Trench. They have stories that are so intricately woven, they create an image you would weep to see. If we took the time to truly listen to people when they are being their most honest selves, we would find the connection we crave.
Social Media is about People not Tech
Since we communicate on social media with technology and don’t actually see the person we are talking to it can be hard to remember that there is someone on the other side of the screen. This can be seen when people make cruel hurtful comments on a stranger’s posts. Comments they would never make to someone’s face in the real world for fear they’d get beat up or slapped down hard.
How we market can also focus too much on the tech and too little on the people. We end up making a bunch of noise and never connect with anyone because we are using bots, data, software, and other people to do our posting.
I make money creating posts for people and making them look good - However, I should be seen as the advertising part of the strategy not the whole strategy. You still need to show up, post about your life, engage with your connections, and build an authentic community.
If social media becomes a bunch of hired hands inauthentically engaging with each other, where is the connection or community in that?
Take a moment to study your social media profiles, what do they say about your values and goals? Is it authentic or is it a facade of what you want people to see?
Social Media Marketing Image
We know ads and marketing messages are tailored to take advantage of people’s Insecurities and promise to make you prettier, richer, happier. Seth Godin said it best when he called Marketers liars, we are in a way. We tell the best stories and spin the worst into appearing better. We manipulate stats to fit our stories and we strategically make our topics fit what we believe society wants.
Too often we portray an image we think people want to see and then when we show up being our authentic selves, there is a disconnect between what the client was expecting and who showed up. These types of disconnects foster distrust, which can be difficult for some people to overcome when building a more authentic connection in the real world.
I read one Realtor® review that said, "He wasn't as much as an a**hole as I thought he was going to be." In this case, the client was pleasantly surprised that the person was not the image they were portraying on social media. I bet this Realtor lost a lot of potential business because he was trying hard to be what he thought the luxury market wanted and not who he was a person.
Be you. If you don't wear suits everyday, don't have all your images of you wearing suits. If you have a trucker's way of talking don't try to come across online as a Harvard educated professor. Be you. People who like the image they see on social media, will choose to connect with you.
Get the Right Marketing Help
Social media is a difficult world to navigate and a business needs a Marketing Manager who understands how to analyze the data and create engaging content to tell a brand’s story.
The rules keep changing as the industry tries to manage the large amount of content being posted to it. - Keeping up is a full time job and the information is fraught with untested ideas and repeated half truths of self educated digital marketers trying to be influencers in a murky industry.
Yes, what you post, how you post, and when you post matters. You need someone who understands how to test, measure, and analyze data. Someone who can tell a story in soundbites and make it look good in the process. You need someone who understand human nature and how to tap into it to get an emotional reaction.
Even with the right help - You still need to show up. Don't hire someone and then become a ghost or invisible
Engagement is the Currency of Social Media
The hard part is creating content people want to engage with. Unless you are in a LinkedIn pod and obligated to like whatever crap people post, getting engagement is difficult.
In 2020 I was commenting on posts for 2-3 hours a day and getting lots of engagement and meeting wonderful people, who do what I used to do - Social Media Marketing. When I started to focus more on digital magazine publishing and building a team, I didn't have 2-3 hours. What happened? I was still posting but LinkedIn and like posts of those who were supportive of me, the result was LinkedIn stopped showing my posts to people. My impressions went down from almost 2 000 to under 100. Engaging by commenting is that important to getting reach for your posts.
Is 2-3 hours a good use of your time? If all you do is comment and move on without asking to meet off LinkedIn, you will have a connection, but you won't have connection. Those you talk with on a regular basis will become your connections and they will support you while you support them.
Test the platforms to see what works and what doesn't. If you engage more what happens to your reach? If you start commenting what happens?
By analysing the reactions people have with your content, you can learn what kind of content you need to be producing. Programs like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Buzz social, and Zoho social have reports to help you assess what is working and what fell flat.
A Couple Problems
There is the content you like to make and then the content people like to engage with, which usually has a dog or cat involved. You can’t create content that doesn’t fit within the parameters of your brand and marketing plan, so what do you do?
The best thing you can do is create the best content you can. Content that reflects your brand, reputation, and image. Then engage with other people's posts to get noticed, add connections, foster real connection, and build a community. Your activity as an engager will do more than any post you put out there, but not all engagement is created equal.
Comments and replying to others comments and their replies to you, will do more for your brand reach than simply hitting the like button, any monkey can hit like.
The next step is to contact your connections and really connect with them one on one, because until you do that, they are a connection not someone you are connected with. Do you buy or do business with a connection or someone you are connected with? Someone you have built a trusting relationship with and is connected with people you are connected with.
Don't confuse lots of connections on social media with real connection within a community. There is a big difference between followers and community - which do you want to foster on social media?
The other problem is the lurkers who don’t engage with any content, making it harder to know what is good content and what is bad content. Even if they love what you create, you’ll never know, so you might as well make content that reflects who you are.
What you'll discover is most people didn't even see your post because the social media platform didn't show it do anyone. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and the rest all have their own algorithms, which they keep messing with and unless you have hours to test what works today - you'll feel lost in all the noise.
Keep posting. Post for the lurkers. Post because you enjoy it. Post because you want to. Don't post if its a chore and drains you of energy. For you, there are other ways to connect with a market.
If you don't enjoy engaging on social media - don't do it.
Think about how you like to connect with the market to get clients. What has worked for you in the past - do that and stay focused on that path instead of getting sucked into promises of social media marketers who want you to hire them or business coaches who struggle with their own social media marketing.
Do what works for you. Do it over and over and over again.
To read the full article about how to connection on social media, click here